


Insomnia

by MountainRose



Series: Perspectives [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man: Extremis, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Insomnia, JARVIS fixes it, Sick Tony, restless leg syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-12-31 18:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MountainRose/pseuds/MountainRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's having trouble sleeping, after the portal.<br/>And there's only so long you can go without sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Insomnia

I can’t sleep.

It’s... suffocating. Exposed, crushing and terrifying, all at once. Lying there? In that bed? No. I get to the edge of sleep, where things start to go, quiet down, and it feels like falling. No suit, no whine in my hands, falling with no way of saving myself. Can’t see, can’t hear, can’t breathe. Unprotected, naked, vulnerable. It’s not like waking up, because I never get that far, but I sure as hell can’t keep lying there while it feels like my head and legs are falling in opposite directions.

The workshop is better, sometimes. Few hours on a workbench, maybe. That’s okay. And if Rhodey notices the spanner imprint on my face, well, that’s okay too. He’s an ass, but y’know, whatever.

But it’s not enough. So I’m seeing things. Corner of my eye, when I turn my head. Rips and tears in the fabric of reality. Tiny, hairline fractures in the world.

It’s worse than terrifying; it’s _debilitating_. Can’t breathe, can’t sleep, can’t see.

When the Avengers call, I shouldn’t go. Compromised, liability. Whatever, like I’m going to sit on the bench.

So I get a few extra bruises, when I look sideways instead of straight ahead, when I search for the edges of the world instead of the next target. It’s fine, _I’m_ fine.

I’m connected to JARVIS now, body and soul; he picks up the slack when it takes too long to come back from a knock on the head, those crucial three seconds between taking a shot to the chest plate and doling one out.

By the time we’re done, it’s been seventy hours. JARVIS has been tracking the microsleeps and they’re getting worse, more frequent, longer, particularly since my brain got rattled.

It hurts.

J’s locked me out of weapons, because I’m twitching, and the spasms sometimes look too much like manual commands to be safe. I debrief from the suit, too, give some excuse about the scorch mark on my faceplate stopping it opening. Steve frowns, but fuck it, I look like shit, and Cap does that... that _thing_... when he thinks I’m being reckless. So what if I am? I’m an independant consultant, his SIC, and a grown-ass man, with the biggest brain on the planet running my suit.

In all seriousness? J’s mainframe takes up fourteen warehouses on three continents, spread across the globe. ‘Brain the size of a planet’ and Steve occasionally asks him to make toast. I like the irony, I like that no one really knows what JARVIS is capable of.

I hope they never have to find out. Hope J never has to deal with that.

So maybe I wasn’t concentrating, and I’m halfway to the launch bay, and the suit is walking without my muscles doing anything. JARVIS says it was a whole two minutes that time; I’m getting into danger zones now. I don’t want to look at my BP, or the blood panel J’s running constantly.

There’s an instant, as JARVIS leaps off the edge to clear the engines, where I’m falling. I’m half-expecting the flashback, and J knows it’s coming. The comms are off, the suit locks into long-distance flight mode, and I choke on the scream.

I thrash against the suit and something like... like that first shot when they get you to the hospital, like relief, just fills me, pours into me.

Oh.

The suit tightens around my legs; JARVIS has noticed too, and it’s _working_. I’m limp and soft and protected, cradled by every fear, every terror I poured into making the armor.

My heart’s slowing down, my head’s full of cotton and sunlight and... and I think I’m falling asleep.

Finally.

 


End file.
